Gutter Cleaning in Metro Detroit

Plan on two visits a year, one in late spring and one in late fall. Homes with big maples or oaks right overhead may need a third, since one tree over the roof can fill a gutter by itself. Newer subdivisions with young trees can sometimes manage with just the fall visit.

The spring visit is the one people skip. It's for the seeds: maple helicopters come down in huge numbers in May, along with oak tassels and pollen. They pack into the gutter, hold water and start to sprout. Maple seedlings growing out of a gutter mean spring has been skipped for a few years.

The best window is after the oaks finish and before the first hard freeze, usually the second half of November around here. Book in early October and the oaks will fill the gutters again within three weeks.

That window is short, which is why late-November dates book first. With mostly maples you have more room, and early November is fine. With oaks over the house, it's worth waiting. If you're having Christmas lights installed too, this is the visit to pair with it, since both jobs happen on the roofline in the same few weeks.

Clean gutters don't prevent ice dams. Ice dams come from heat escaping into the attic, melting snow on the upper roof, and the meltwater refreezing at the cold edge. The fix for that is attic insulation and ventilation.

What a clogged gutter does is make a dam worse. Wet leaves packed in the gutter freeze into a block at the edge, which gives the ice something to build on and holds meltwater against the roof. Frozen downspouts take away the water's last way out. So a November cleaning won't stop ice dams, and it does remove one of the things that makes them bad. If you get dams every winter, spend the money on an insulation and ventilation check first.

Weight is the other risk. Wet debris and ice can put more load on the hangers than they were built for. Gutters that pull away from the fascia in February usually started as gutters nobody cleared in November.

Then there's freeze-thaw. Southeast Michigan goes through dozens of freeze-thaw cycles between November and March. Water gets into a crack, freezes, expands about nine percent and widens the crack a little each time. It's the same thing that causes potholes, and it works on caulk, mortar and window seals too. A gutter full of wet debris keeps water sitting right where that damage starts.

The gutter is the part you see, and the downspout is the part that fails. Debris works its way to the outlet, packs into the first elbow and sets. From the ground, or even a ladder, the gutter can look clear while the water has nowhere to go.

We run water down every downspout and watch the bottom. If it doesn't run clear, we snake it before we call the job done. If your downspouts drain into underground lines to the yard or the street, we check that the far end is flowing, because a crushed or root-filled line backs water up into the downspout just like a clog.

This matters more in Michigan because of basements. Most homes here have a full basement, and an overflowing gutter dumps water straight down against the foundation. That's where seepage in the corner of a finished basement usually starts, and it costs far more to fix than the gutter cleaning that would have prevented it.

Gutter guards get oversold. Good ones cut down how often you need a cleaning, and none of them make it unnecessary. Fine debris and shingle grit still get in, and on many designs the leaves that can't get in mat on top and block the flow.

Pine needles and maple seeds are the problem here, because they slide straight through mesh that stops a leaf. Under heavy oak or maple cover, guards can turn a clogged gutter into a matted roof edge that sends water over the front.

We clean under removable guards and put them back. Some sealed systems can't come off without damage, and if yours is one of them, we'll say so. If you're thinking about guards, expect them to take you from three cleanings a year to one.

Gutter cleaning is priced on the total length of the gutters, the number of downspouts, the height of the house and how complicated the roofline is. A one-story ranch with a simple roof goes quickly. A two-story colonial with dormers, valleys and a steep pitch means moving the ladder many times, and it takes much longer.

If you're booking window cleaning too, we do the gutters first, since clearing a gutter can drop grit down the glass.

The dark vertical stripes on the face of aluminum gutters, sometimes called tiger stripes, are oxidation and road film bonded to the finish. Cleaning out the gutter doesn't touch them, and neither does a regular house wash. They need a brightening treatment worked into the face by hand.

It's cosmetic, and on a house with white or light-colored gutters it makes one of the biggest visible differences for the money. We do it as an add-on to pressure washing and soft washing, priced by the foot.